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| A long list of HOME Manifests. |
I spent the first Sunday of June hanging out at Minoru Chapel with longtime wedding officiant Mitch and Christine from Richmond Public Art welcoming folks of all ages and stripes into the space. It seemed that 90% of people had never been in the chapel before, and the other 10% were married there!
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| Sun on the Chapel, and a little sign. |
It was such a treat to meet so many folks, hear stories weddings long ago ("I remember this aisle being very long, but I see now that it's very short!" "To be honest, I can't remember what year I got married! Now you have me very curious to look that up.") and to see photos and videos of some more recent nuptials.
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| Mini Manifest station. |
I also introduced visitors to the idea of the manifest, and invited them to participate in creating manifests of their own: SELF - what do you have on your now/today; HOME - what is in your home; CITY - what is in your city; OTHER - what is in another place/location you care about. The results were a wonderful mix of the mundane and profound, and it was particularly gratifying to see the careful consideration people gave to creating and reading the manifests.
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| A few HOME manifests. |
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| Early in the morning with only two SELF manifests in a line. |
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| Hard at work listing. |
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| Love seeing what rises to the top. In this home, that would be TWO Ukeleles! |
I'm eager to see how text which appears to be so simple can be elevated through performance, and to continue developing ways to create large collections of text from many small interactions. It's especially interesting to see how these seemingly arbitrary lists start to tell a story of a place. From Bubble Tea to Traffic, Salmon to Trees, Family to Colonialism, a complex picture of Richmond starts to emerge.
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| Manifesto supplies and inspiration, on the Chapel registration desk. |
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| Father-son manifest collaboration. |
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| A young visitor's SELF manifest. Just the basics. |
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| The sorts of things we hold but don't talk about.... |
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| Two CITY manifests.... |
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| And two more.... |
It also turned out the Mitch, Chapel wedding officiant, and I both carried a bit of a secret in our SELF manifests: a false front tooth!
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| Mitch & Julie with false teeth in place.... |
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| And revealed! |
